Known Turf

This is a mail I received from an activist with the Samajwadi Jan Parishad, in Betul, Madhya Pradesh (I am reproducing it, sic, below) and I...

My grandmother used to say ' qayamat se daro ' (Or maybe she didn't; maybe it was some other grand-maternal figure in the family...

And now, Judith Miller blames the bloggers too! Miller describes to Vanity Fair the process by which the Pajama People destroyed her: The b...

Now this is how a government deals properly with women, if it wants to treat them with respect. To me, the act - of letting strippers take ...

Two spaces I've been meaning to link to, for a while now. How The Other Half Lives For some good writing and some significant questions,...

When rows upon rows of cycle-rickshaw-wale lie curled up on the passenger seat of their blue rickshaws, head and shoulders swallowed by the...

Yesterday, I was filled with a deep, deep sense of despair. Never, in recent memory, have I felt this numb, this deflated. As I read, accoun...

I had my doubts about blogging this - writing about street harassment . After all, it's as common-place as paan stains, as ubiquitous a...

Ever since I met these women , I've been thinking about my 'bai'. The maid, the maidservant, the domestic 'help', the d...

This lady has a delightful take on the news and I've been meaning to link to her newsmericks blog for a while now. I would also like to...

Kathgulab was not an easy book to read, and it is not an easy book to describe. At best, I can describe how I dealt with it. I can only...

".... a long-standing myth that Hollywood is in the business of making great—and original—movies. This illusion, like all successful de...

Came across this article , about clean water legislation in the US... I'm not writing about it because the law or the environment intere...

"Early last year, 1,600 women, all of them health workers at two Cumbrian hospitals, won the biggest ever equal pay deal: a total o...

When I was growing up, I was given to believe that - as a girl - I'd got the best deal possible, being born into Islam. Which other reli...

I've been watching the cartoon tamasha for several days now, and not blogging about it because I was afraid to. I was tempted to say a ...

I have a new pastime since going to Punjab: turban-watching. All these years, I've grown up thinking that there are two kinds of Sikh tu...

In Jodhpur, or an hour's drive away, I met a man called Paipa Ram. Paipa Ram has Silicosis . Certified Silicosis... That's a very ha...

The Kalaghoda Gazette for those who can't be there, or those who were there but still want to read about it, or those who just generall...

How do you react to a man who is lying in hospital, minus three limbs ? How are you supposed to look when you step into the government hospi...